Winter Wonderland

In the last 48 hours we have gotton a lot of snow - somewhere between six and eight inches.

The top picture shows what it looks like outside our window.  (Try and find our car out there) Whitney seems to really enjoy looking outside and saying 'snow'.  She thinks snow is great fun! 

One of the main things I dislike about the snow is the extra time it takes to get ready.  I have to plan an extra 10 or fifteen minutes into getting out the door.  Trying to put little kid gloves and boots and hats and coats on requires a college degree, or something like that.  When I worked at the daycare, we would spend more time dressing the kids for the snow than we actually did playing in the snow.  But just dressing Whitney and Rachel isn't too bad.  And Whitney tries to be helpful by finding her gloves or attempting to put on her own coat.

Will has been having fun going outside with Whitney.  Rachel and I stay inside so Rachel won't get too cold.  Whitney  tried eating the snow and told me later that it was yummy and not cold.  After playing outside, Whitney and Will came inside for some delicious hot chocolate.  Thank you Scott and Emily for buying the yummy hot chocolates for us for Christmas.

Here Whitney stands by the snowman that she and Will made.  I made a very small contribution by finding the carrot for the nose, but most of the credit goes to Will.  He is a good snowman maker. 

So winter has finally hit Cheney.  I thought we might get lucky and not get much snow this year, but that's okay.  Whitney really loves the snow.

Hanging in Cheney

It has been bitterly cold this last week, so we have been spending a lot of time in our apartment.  When Whitney gets too stir-crazy, one of us will take her out of the house after Will comes home so Rachel will not have to leave the warm apartment.  I want the warm weather to come back so we can play outside again and it is only the middle of January.  Oh well.  Here are some inside things we have been doing.

 
It is hard to tell by this picture, but Whitney tried to push both strollers at the same time.  We have a big umbrella stroller that Whitney can sit in and Whitney got a little stroller for Christmas for her baby.  Here Whitney pushed both strollers and the little one went farther.  Thank you Newton's law or Einstein or whoever, you were correct.

Will made a fort behind our couch.  Whitney wasn't too sure about it at first, but she liked being in there with her dad.  That is, until I got out the camera and Whitney's serious face came out.

We have drawers in our kitchen that Whitney is allowed to pull the things out and play with.  Mostly, she just likes to dump all the hand towels and aprons and whatnot onto the floor.  Here Whitney stands by the drawer after she tried to get everything to fit back in.  Now I know why parents are better packers than kids; my mom could always pack some much more stuff into our suitcases than we could and now I understand why.

We have been playing lots of games since it has been too cold to go outside.  This is Tessera - or the bug game.  Whitney has stages of liking certain games and wanting to play them all the time.  Then a couple days go by and she picks a new game to love and want to play over and over.  For now, she loves the bug game.

Here is Whitney giving baby Rachel a kiss.  Most of the time, Whitney is very soft and loving with Rachel.  She does get jealous sometimes and tries to pull baby Rachel off my lap so she can be with me.  But we are working on being very gentle.  I think Whitney really loves being a big sister.

We all went on an excursion to the library on Saturday.  Whitney loves the library because it has a kid computer with children games on it and she likes looking at all the books.  Here we are all ready to go.  Whitney is wearing the hat that Erin knitted for her for Christmas.  Thanks Erin.

Will and I both picked several books from our childhood and read them to each other.  It was really fun and Whitney liked all the new childrens books to read. 
So we have been having fun in Cheney with our bigger family.  Being a family of four is very different from a family of three but we are all getting the hang of it.  Okay, everyone have a good day.

365 pictures

we have decided to copy some of our siblings and start a picture-a-day blog, we do not promise to post a picture daily, but we will take a picture every day and eventually get them up, we hope that it does not end up as a 300 picture blog.  here is the link to it, we will also put in our links so that it can easily be found from our blog.

Whitney Bobby

It was asked what we should name this blog, and Whitney was the first to speak up, so that is that.

we hope you all enjoy it

New Years

Happy 2012 everybody!  We plan on having a great year here in Cheney.  Now I just need to remember to write 2012 on everything; somehow I always mess that up for the first month or so.  We had a really fun New Years with our family.  Will's parents were able to come into town for the weekend.  We wish they could have stayed longer, but it was fun seeing them.

Rachel and Whitney really love their Grandpa Keeler.  Whitney thought it was great fun having someone else read her a story - instead of boring old mom who always reads bedtime stories. 

We went to Turnbull Wildlife Refuge while they were here.  Unfortunately, in December there are no wildlife around, so we got to look at pretty wildlife habitat.  Will's parents were clever and told Whitney that all the animals were sleeping.  We will have to go back later when Whitney can see some animals.

So it was a really pretty little adventure.  I wish there had been any animals (even a bird to see), but that was not to be.  Oh well.  I don't think Whitney was too disappointed.  We still had a nice time looking around.

For New Years, we had a delicious cheese fondue party.  I have never made fondue, so Will's mom taught me how she makes it and it was tasty.  I will have to get her to write down the recipe for me.

I didn't know dipping crackers and broccoli into a cheese fondue would be so filling, but all of us were too full to do the chocolate fondue that we had planned.  ( Dont worry though because the chocolate was used the next day; we didn't let it go to waste).

We did Rachel's baby blessing on Sunday.  It was kind of last minute, but we wanted Will's parents to be able to attend.  The blessing was really beautiful; I am grateful that Will honors the priesthood so he could give the blessing. 

Here are pictures of our families after the blessing.  We took Rachel out of her dress so it couldn't get dirty. 

So we had a great New Years.  Thanks Will's parents for coming out to see us.  We had lots of fun together.  I hope we can see you guys again soon.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

We had such a wonderful Christmas this year.  I love that it fell on Sunday and we were able to hear Christmas messages and listen to beautiful music at church.  What a special way to really commemorate the birth of our Savior.  And, of course, there were lots of great presents to open after we got home from church.

Whitney was so excited to be given permission to rip.  She usually isn't allowed to rip paper or books or anything like that at home, so ripping the wrapping paper off the presents was a special treat.  Maybe we will have to wrap presents more often so Whitney can rip more.

There were only a couple of times when we had to stop Whitney from opening other peoples presents.  But she did get to open baby Rachel's gifts and some of mom and dad's as well.  I think that was her favorite part of Christmas.

Whitney enjoyed checking out the stockings.  She liked pulling out the treats and then putting them back in again so she could pull them back out.  It was pretty entertaining just watching her work.  The stocking is almost as big as Whitney, so she required a little assistance from Will to get the treats that were on the bottom. 

Here are all the kids on Christmas morning.

 Hooray for everybody being together.  It had been about a year since we were all together, so this was really fun.  In between opening presents we had some snacks - chips and dip and a veggie tray and crackers. 

After Christmas dinner we played some fun games.  I think everybody likes Apples to Apples.  Conner got a new game where you balance little chairs on top of each other; it sounds kind of weird, but it is actually pretty fun.  I was horrible at it though.  I just need more practice - lots and lots more practice.

Finally, since we had extra bodies, we asked Erin to take a family picture of the four of us.  This is our first picture all together.

Whitney has a little bit of red eye; my sister bought us photo shop though, so as soon as we get that all set up we will be able to fix up the pictures.  I am really excited about that because I like to take lots of pictures.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a great Christmas as well.  Lots of love to all of you from Cheney.